1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data processing performed by an image forming system including a plurality of image forming apparatuses, management apparatuses, and information processing apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, along with demand for security of a print product and a print method as well as an increased number of image forming apparatuses, a print environment in an office or public facilities has been changed. As one of such changes, demand for a “pull printing system” has increased. The “pull printing system” refers to a system in which an image forming apparatus acquires document data from a server and prints the acquired document data.
In the pull printing system, a user generally inputs a user identification (ID) and a password via an input unit of the image forming apparatus and searches for document data registered in the server.
Then, the image forming apparatus acquires the searched document data from the server according to an instruction from the user and prints the acquired document data. In a case of printing document data with such a method, the user may be required to wait for a longer time in front of the image forming apparatus until printing is completed as compared with an ordinary case of printing the data with a printer driver from a personal computer (PC).
Meanwhile, demand for improving security has increased in various fields, and a user authentication unit that authenticates a user by utilizing physical information (biometric information) about a user is discussed. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-178304 discusses a method for user authentication by extracting facial parts such as eyes, nose, and mouth from a face image of the user to calculate a characteristic amount of the user's face, and evaluating a degree of similarity to a previously registered face image.
In addition, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-163758 discusses an authentication method in the above-described pull printing system using biometric information.
In the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-163758, a fingerprint and information acquired by a face image recognition of a user, for example, are used instead of the user ID and the password input by the user to perform the user authentication, so that the user does not need to input the user ID and the password via a generally small-sized screen of the image forming apparatus.
However, the user authentication by using biometric information can save only the user's trouble of inputting the user ID and the password, but the problem that the user needs to wait in front of the image forming apparatus for a long time until the printing is completed cannot be solved.
That is, in the above-described conventional method, the user cannot issue a request for searching for document data to the server unless the user inputs any information to the image forming apparatus. Thus, it takes a long time to start the search for the document data.
In addition to the time for the search, time is further taken for acquiring document data to be printed and converting a format of the acquired document data into a printable format. Accordingly, the time required from the issuance of a print request to the completion of the printing may become long.